Abu Dhabi Art opens ‘Beyond: Emerging Artists’ exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia

Abu Dhabi Art opened its Beyond: Emerging Artists 2021 exhibition at Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, Italy, which will run until 22nd May 2022, coinciding with the Biennale Arte 2022.

For its first iteration in Italy, the 2021 Beyond: Emerging Artists is showcasing the commissioned artists Christopher Joshua Benton, Maitha Abdalla and Hashel Al Lamki, who were supported by guest curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, co-founders of multidisciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented.

The opening reception saw the attendance of Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of Culture and Youth; Saood Abdulaziz Al Hosani, Under-Secretary of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), alongside Salem Khalid Abdullah Al Qasimi, Assistant Under-Secretary for the Heritage and Arts Sector and the UAE’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Omar Obaid Al Shamsi, UAE Ambassador to Italy, along with 400 attendees.

As this exhibition travels from Abu Dhabi to Venice, the artists’ works have been adapted to the space at Palazzo Franchetti.

Combining film, installation, and sculpture, Benton’s The World Was My Garden works with the palm tree as a metaphor for migration, labour economies and the history of slavery in the Gulf.

Abdalla’s Too Close to the Sun encompasses sculpture, works on canvas and photography covering intertwining themes, including the wildness of human nature, the archetype of the feminine psyche, and the untamable character of wild animals.

Al Lamki charters various realms from the natural to the built and the imagined in order to foreground the scarcity of the earth’s resources and the way that these events impact the human psyche.

Beyond: Emerging Artists is on show at Venice’s Palazzo Franchetti until 22nd May 2022.

WAM